Rebel Wilson Fails In Costs Bid Over Defamation Lawsuit Victory

Wilson had applied for Bauer Media, who were found to have defamed her in a 2017 lawsuit, to pay all but $100k of her $1.4 million legal costs.

Rebel Wilson has failed in her attempt to have $1.3 million of her $1.4 million legal costs paid for by Bauer Media following her victory in a defamation lawsuit against the company.

Back in September 2017, the Pitch Perfect actress prevailed in a four-week trial in which her lawyers proved to a jury that Australian media group Bauer has defamed Wilson by branding her a “serial liar”, alleging that she fabricated her age, name and childhood in order to get ahead in Hollywood.

On Thursday (April 12th), the Victoria supreme court Justice John Dixon turned down Wilson’s application to have $1.3 million of her costs met by Bauer. However, he did rule that Bauer would be paying most of Wilson’s costs, but just not in the “gross sum costs order” that her lawyers had wanted.

The practical upshot is expected to be that Bauer will end up paying around 80% of Wilson’s costs (around $1.1 million), and she’ll likely have to wait until the end of 2018 to be reimbursed as costs are settled in the usual manner.

However, Justice Dixon did approve the cost of a security guard for Wilson at Bauer’s expense, at a rate of $9,000 a day, which he said was “reasonable”, citing an incident that had happened during the case itself last year.

“There was an unusually large public interest in the proceeding,” Dixon said. “It came to my attention during the course of the trial that the plaintiff had been approached in an inappropriate fashion by a member of the public.

“That person’s attendance within the court precinct was monitored by court security personnel and I was satisfied that the plaintiff was upset and detrimentally affected by the contact.”

Bauer Media is planning an appeal against the $4.5 million award itself, with the matter listed for hearing in the next few days.